Your Division Commander Promotion

[kepi]

Which Division Commander would you like to have seen given a promotion to lead a Corps?
I vote for Patrick Cleburne. I just admire his tenacity in a fight!

 

[Pat Answer]

Patrick Cleburne and Emory Upton were both tough fighters. Had the war lasted longer (and assuming Cleburne survived Franklin of course) I could see it for either one or both.

 

[Mr. King]

Cleburne most definitely. I also would like to have seen Jeb Stuart as a permanent infantry corps commander. I think he would have brought enough audacity to that wing to turn a few tides. He did a fine job at Chancellorsville. His cool head during such a crucial time saved the day. And to think of his youth... he was definitely a prodigy.

 

[AUG]

Perhaps John B. Gordon promoted to corps command earlier than he was. I've also wondered how Richard Taylor would have performed as a corps commander in the ANV or AoT. He was an excellent brigade commander in the East early on, particularly under Jackson in the Shenandoah, and later did well as an army commander in Louisiana. I think Taylor certainly had what it took to manage things from a higher level.

 

[GELongstreet]

Beside Cleburne, who by the way got his try as corps commander, I´d nominate John S. Bowen.

Otherwise Franklin Gardner could have been interesting.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Mahone, perhaps?

 

[GELongstreet]

Forgot to include the Union, so I´d nominate John Buford for a cavalry corps.

 

[bankerpapaw]

Which Division Commander would you like to have seen given a promotion to lead a Corps?
I vote for Patrick Cleburne. I just admire his tenacity in a fight!

I agree!!!

 

[ivanj05]

Cleburn is the easy answer, and a good one. Buford had he lived would have benn worlds better as a pure cavalry commander than Sheridan.

 

[TinCan]

John C. Breckinridge would have made a good corps commander .

 

[NedBaldwin]

John C. Breckinridge would have made a good corps commander .

He was one during the end of 1863

 

[Tom Elmore]

William Dorsey Pender. General Lee considered him to be one of his best and was grooming him for a corps command. He was a protege of A.P. Hill, who respected his abilities. Pender thought J.E.B. Stuart, a USMA classmate, was a "scheming fellow," and he disliked serving under Stonewall Jackson because "he forgets that one gets tired, hungry, or sleepy." But Pender was himself a strict disciplinarian, and brave in battle. He was mortally wounded by an artillery shell fragment at Gettysburg.

 

[Miles Krisman]

Robert E. Rodes. He was a hard fighter and strict disciplinarian.......brave in battle. He too was killed by an artillery shell fragment while rallying his men at the 3rd Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864. He had served with John B. Gordon and the two men were very similiar on the battlefield. In fact, the successes of General Early in 1864, were largely due to the performance of these two officers. Gordon made a great Corps commander. Rodes would have done the same.

 

[Barnesville Blues]

John C. Breckinridge would have made a good corps commander .

John C. Breckenridge commanded a Corps at Missionary Ridge. General William B. Bate was given command of his old division from that point on which at Missionary Ridge was composed of the Kentucky Orphan Brigade, Findley's Florida Brigade, and Bate's old Brigade which became known as Tyler's Brigade there after.

 

[dlavin]

John Bowen perhaps.

 

[TinCan]

Breckinridge was a corps commander for a very short time (Nov.8,1863-Dec.15,1863) from Missionary Ridge until Atlanta when Johnston took over the army from Bragg . He reverted to division command until he was named Confederate Secretary of War.

 

[AUG]

Robert E. Rodes. He was a hard fighter and strict disciplinarian.......brave in battle. He too was killed by an artillery shell fragment while rallying his men at the 3rd Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864. He had served with John B. Gordon and the two men were very similiar on the battlefield. In fact, the successes of General Early in 1864, were largely due to the performance of these two officers. Gordon made a great Corps commander. Rodes would have done the same.

Darrell Collins' biography of Rodes has been on my wish list for some time. He came to mind but since I haven't really read enough about him I didn't list him here. From what I have read, it sounds like Rodes had a pretty good record, with the exception of Gettysburg.

 

[Eric Wittenberg]

Forgot to include the Union, so I´d nominate John Buford for a cavalry corps.

If he hadn't fallen ill with the typhoid fever that took his life, that would have happened. Just before the Battle of Chickamauga, Gen. David S. Stanley, the commander of the Army of the Cumberland's Cavalry Corps, fell ill with typhoid himself. He took medical leave and was gone for months. In October, after Chickamauga, Rosecrans, recognizing the need, asked that he be sent Buford to assume command of his Cavalry Corps. Buford agreed, so long as he could take the Reserve Brigade with him, but the Bristoe Station Campaign was underway, and not much was happening at Chattanooga, so there was no hurry. Unfortunately, Buford then fell ill himself and died before he could report to the West.

My intense dislike of the "what if" game is well-known and needs not be repeated here. There is, however, a tantalizing one here that I will periodically permit myself to indulge in. In the spring of 1864, John Buford's first cousin Abraham Buford, also a West Point-trained career dragoon and with whom John Buford was quite close (the thoroughbred horse that John Buford rode at Gettysburg--named Grey Eagle--was a gift from Abe), assumed command of a division in Forrest's corps. Ponder that battle royale for just a moment, if you will....

 

[Eric Wittenberg]

Cleburn is the easy answer, and a good one. Buford had he lived would have benn worlds better as a pure cavalry commander than Sheridan.

Not long before his death, Joe Hooker gave an interview to the San Francisco Chronicle wherein he stated that had he known just how good John Buford was, he would have given Buford command of the Army of the Potomac's Cavalry Corps and not to George Stoneman. Buford's dear friend John Gibbon, in a post-war writing, said that he had no doubt that had Buford lived, he would have been given command of the AoP Cavalry Corps and not Sheridan.

 

[MaryDee]

That would have been wonderful! I'm glad some contemporaries appreciated Buford, even if after his death. Unfortunately, the typhoid fever bacillus put finish to that idea.